Remembering the First Battery-Operated Clock

Beverley F. Ronalds*

Francis Ronalds invented a reliable electric clock in 1815, twenty-five years before Alexander Bain’s patent. It was powered by dry piles, a modified form of battery that has extremely long life but the disadvantage that its electrical properties vary with the weather. Ronalds had considerable success in creating regulating mechanisms for his clock to ensure accurate time-keeping in all meteorological conditions. He did not go on to commercialise his ideas, although others made and sold comparable timepieces on the Continent.

This year marks the bicentenary of the with the electrically dissimilar metals. The publication of the first battery-operated dry pile was found to have an electric clock. It was rediscovered in the 1970s by potential difference or voltage across its two Charles Aked, Council member of the ends but, unlike Volta’s pile, did not exhibit Antiquarian Horology Society and first an electric current when the terminals were Chairman of the Electrical Horology Group, joined in a circuit. Its potential difference and further information has since come to was also maintained in use whereas a voltaic hand.1 pile ceased to work after a while.3 The clock was created by a prolific Two of the scientists in England who inventor named (later Sir) Francis Ronalds developed and improved the dry pile were FRS (1788–1873); he lived on the Upper Jean-André de Luc (1727–1817) and Mall in Hammersmith, London, at the time George Singer (1786–1817). De Luc held and a plaque on the house records the the position of Reader to Queen Charlotte pioneering electric telegraph demonstration in George III’s court while Singer delivered he performed there the next year.2 He had science lectures in London and made and just ‘retired’ at age twenty-six from running sold electrical equipment. Each developed the family’s cheesemonger business in demonstrations of the dry pile in action, Thames Street in order to focus on his first using its oppositely charged terminals to love of electrical science and engineering. drive the motion of a small bead suspended The power source for the clock was a on a silk thread through attraction and recently developed device called an electric repulsion. The bead could also strike two column or dry pile. Volta had described the charged bells alternately as a chime. voltaic pile (now known as the battery) in The electrical properties of the dry pile 1800 — one version comprised a series of were quickly found to depend on the zinc and copper (or silver) discs interleaved temperature and humidity. The aim of with cardboard soaked with brine. The dry Ronalds’ first scientific papers in 1814 was pile differed in that the paper discs were dry to investigate these relationships and their (Fig. 1). It was created with the goal of causes, and he sought advice from the two learning how the battery worked and, in experienced scientists. He soon decided to particular, the role of the brine in comparison automate his observations by adopting a

* Dr Beverley F. Ronalds ([email protected]) served as Group Executive at Australia’s national science laboratory and Woodside Professor of oil and gas engineering in Perth. Sir Francis Ronalds is her great-great- great-uncle. 1. C.K. Aked, ‘The First Electric Clock’, Antiquarian Horology, VIII (1973), 276–89 2. B.F. Ronalds, The Man who Imagined Today’s World of “Electric Conversations” 200 Years Ago: The Story of Sir Francis Ronalds, to be printed. 3. W. Hackmann, ‘The Enigma of Volta’s “Contact Tension” and the Development of the “Dry Pile”’, Nuova Voltiana: Studies on Volta and his Times, 3 F. Bevilacqua, L. Frenonese (Eds) (2000), 103–19.

Fig. 1. Ronalds’ dry piles, manufactured by Singer (1814). Source: Science Museum, reproduced with permission. similar suspended bead arrangement and adjustable in width to fine-tune the motion attaching it to a pawl-and-ratchet with a (Fig. 2). The arrangement also allowed any dial so that the number of vibrations in any increase in electricity to be counteracted chosen period could be counted. by larger amplitude of vibration and The obvious idea then hit him of additional charge draw-off through the applying the arrangement as an electric reduced air gap. A bank of six of Singer’s clock. First, he added stiffness and weight piles formed the power source.4 Ronalds to the moving element to give it the steady acknowledged both Singer’s and de Luc’s periodicity of a pendulum. The role of the prior work in his paper, noting that he electrical attraction was now primarily to preferred the experimental set up of the boost the pendulum’s natural motion to latter to the former as the starting point for overcome frictional decay. There were two his own application. difficulties to be overcome: the charge His second mode of weather needed to be regulated to minimise compensation, also published in the 1815 variations due to the weather and delivered Philosophical Magazine, employed a in a way that did not jar the smooth vertical rod that rested on the surface of the oscillation of the pendulum. mercury in a large thermometer and was Ronalds trialled numerous solutions to linked to a beam carrying the clock face these challenges over the next few years. and pendulum. As the mercury rose, The approach that he first published on 9 literally, the beam was elevated and the March 1815 in the Philosophical Magazine pendulum swung further before being was to prevent contact — the piles charged by brass plates at an adjustable discharged the electrified pendulum angle (Fig. 3). The piles were sealed in a box through a small air gap that was readily of cement. Ronalds, who always understated

4. F. Ronalds, ‘On Electro-galvanic Agency employed as a Moving Power; with a Description of a Galvanic Clock’, Phil. Mag., XLV (1815), 261–4.

Fig. 2. Battery-operated clock – model 1. Source: Phil. Mag. XLV (1815).

Left: Fig. 3. Battery-operated clock – model 2 (1815). Source: Ronalds Archive IET 6.56, reproduced with permission. his achievements, felt able to record that ‘the instrument actually keeps tolerably good time’.5 He then reverted to preventing hard contact between the pendulum bob and the charged plates, this time by setting up taut cross wires that cushioned the ends of the swing.6 Hand-written results survive from November 1817 in the Ronalds Archive at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) that indicate the clock’s net gain or loss over several days to have been just tens of seconds.7 In his final configuration, the piles were again cemented into a base box and mechanical effects of delivering electric charge to the pendulum were softened by suspending the contact points by fine flexible wire (Fig. 4). He described the device as ‘vibrating seconds as regularly at least as any common clock’.6 5. F. Ronalds, ‘On Correcting the Rate of an Electric Clock by a Compensation for Changes of Temperature’, Phil. Mag., XLVI (1815), 203–4. 6. F. Ronalds, ‘Account of an Attempt to Apply M. de Luc’s Electric Column to the Measurement of Time, &c’, Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus (1823), 58–83.

overvaluing his contribution.10 Nothing could be further from the truth – Ronalds’ dominant characteristic was humility. He had just had his first taste of the rather competitive and catty world of science. After Singer’s remarks, and the Admiralty the next year calling his telegraph ‘wholly unnecessary’, Ronalds ‘bid a cordial adieu to Electricity’ and pursued other interests.11 It was thirty-two years before he published again in the Philosophical Magazine. Through his life, Ronalds seldom pursued commercialisation of his inventions. His goal in developing the clock was simply to show that it was possible to use dry piles to keep time in a way that was largely independent of weather effects. He described his research to contacts in Paris, Fig. 4. Battery-operated clock – model 4 (c1818). adding to one, ‘if you were to give the Source: Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph subject attention I think a useful instrument (1823). might be produced’, but there is no evidence that his ideas were adopted directly in the Singer and de Luc both took keen clock-making industry.12 interest in Ronalds’ work. The elderly de Dry pile clocks were turned into practice Luc offered encouragement, while Singer’s by Giuseppe Zamboni (1776–1846). response was to quickly publish his own Zamboni had created a new dry pile in 1812 paper on the topic of mechanical devices that Ronalds noted in his papers could powered by dry piles. Calling Ronalds his deliver considerably higher electric pupil, he gave the impression that he had potential than those made in England. One spearheaded Ronalds’ endeavours, before of Zamboni’s associates in Germany advised condemning the clock as having ‘very little that he had made a clock using the pile very chance of becoming at all useful as a time- shortly after Ronalds’ first paper was keeper’.8 submitted.13 The group’s early work does Ronalds denied in a follow-up paper that not appear to mention attempts to he had received ideas from others beyond compensate for meteorological variability14 those he had already cited.9 Singer retorted — the 1817 Annals of Philosophy advised in the Philosophical Magazine that the of the pile: clock was ‘an electrical toy’ and implied in a long personal attack that Ronalds was

7. F. Ronalds, MMS Nov 1817, Ronalds Archive IET 5.56. 8. G.J. Singer, ‘The Electric Column considered as a maintaining Power, or First Mover for mechanical Purposes’, Phil. Mag., XLV (1815), 359–63. 9. F. Ronalds, ‘On the Electric Column of Mr. De Luc’, Phil. Mag., XLV (1815), 466–7 10. G.J. Singer, ‘Correction of some Errors in Mr. Singer’s Paper on the Mechanical Applications of the Electric Column’, Phil. Mag., XLVI (1815) 11–12. 11. F. Ronalds, Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus (1823), 83pp. 12. F. Ronalds, draft letters to unnamed recipients ?/10/1815, 3/11/1815, Ronalds Archive IET 6.56. 13. M. Tinazzi, ‘Perpetual Electromotive of Giuseppe Zamboni’, Atti del XVI Congresso Nazionale di Storia della Fisica e dell’Astronomia, Como (1996). 14. L.W. Gilbert, ‘Vorläufige Nachricht von grossen zu Stuttgard ausgeführten trocknen Säulen, und von einer sogenannten electrischen Uhr’, Annalen der Physik, No 3 (1815), 187–90..

Zamboni’s Column. — A great number the continuous modulation of meteorological of papers have been published on this and geomagnetic phenomena. He visited new electrical instrument; but no new Zamboni’s laboratory in Verona in 1820 fact of any importance has been brought during his Grand Tour, and again in 1858 to light… It is needless to notice the where he admired a clock that had been clocks that have been constructed by running for fifteen years. Ronalds also kept means of this column as a moving power the piles Singer had made for him and both in this country and in Germany; recorded that they were still active nearly because it is obvious that the great forty years later. 16 Two of these same piles irregularity in the motion of these are now in the Science Museum in South pendulums must render such clocks of Kensington. (Fig. 1) no real utility.15 Dry piles enjoyed a resurgence during World War II as a portable voltage source Zamboni’s team did achieve subsequent and enthusiasts continue to make them success, however, and several clocks that today. The Clarendon Laboratory at the were originally powered by these piles University of Oxford has a chime similar to survive in northern Italy. Singer’s that was made in 1840 and Ronalds retained his interest in clocks continues to work with the original piles.17 and dry piles for the rest of his life. He used It seems likely that Ronalds’ original specially-configured hand-wound invention could not only have approached timepieces to drive a number of his many modern battery-operated clocks in terms of later inventions, including his telegraph and short-term reliability, but well exceeded automated electric generator in 1816 and, them in long-term reliability. in 1845, the first ‘movie camera’ to capture

15. T. Thomson, ‘Account of the Improvements in Physical Science during the Year 1816’, Annals of Philosophy, IX (1817), 1–89. 16. F. Ronalds, copy of letter to H Noad 25/8/1853, Ronalds Archive IET 9.1. 17. A.J. Croft, ‘The Oxford Electric Bell’, European Journal of Physics V (1984), 193–4.

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